On the nature of fear

Hello Everyone,

I originally sent out this email on November 4, 2015.

I received a little push back on some of the examples in here, but remain unmoved. Snakes are not dangerous. Usually.

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Arthur, big bad dog that he is, is terrified of the dishwasher. He's not a huge fan of the vacuum, but it doesn't bother him quite has much as the monster under the sink. And it's gotten worse. We hadn't really noticed that it was this much of a thing for him, but recently, while we were running it at night, he crawled into bed on top of us, panting loudly. He was really, really uneasy about the noise and vibrations.

Sophie barely even notices the dishwasher, but hates hot air balloons. They hang in the sky, are not birds, and occasionally make noise. They are also impervious to her barking. We often find these stories funny because we know that dishwashers and hot air balloons are harmless, but they bother the pets greatly. It's a way for us to feel a bit superior to the dogs. But the thing is, there is nothing saying that they can't figure out that these things are harmless. It's just that they haven't. And it's not that they are lazy either. Dogs, most of them at least, do have the brain power to figure out that these noise-making machines are harmless. You can tell because we can train them to not be afraid, and in fact, not all dogs are scared of the same things. They are just trapped by their emotions. The noise feeds a fear that is deeper than their rational selves. Knowing this, we shouldn't be too quick to feel superior. With vastly better processing power, we often have very similar fears. Snakes and spiders, flying in an airplane and small, tight spaces are all common fears, but pose virtually no danger to us. Yet we can't overcome our emotional reaction to them. Similarly, I always hated when I was in school to have my worries condescended to by older students or adults. Being told, sometimes explicitly, sometimes not, that the concerns I had weren't important because they were small compared to the much larger worries of those older than me. It's true that to an adult, playground politics look really petty. It doesn't matter what little Susie said about you when you have bills to pay and a career and family to manage. But kids don't have those things, and thus in their day to day, playground politics do matter. It will have an impact on their lives. Just because it's not the same concerns another person might have doesn't make them inherently less important. I'm not scared of dishwashers, but I am worried about my career and my family, and those things don't seem to bother Arthur at all. Who's the fool now? wes

#Philosophy